[Newbies] Re: [Squeakland] Bots Inc, Robocup or Maze Squad. --Collective problem solving

[karl]

Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas skrev:
> Hi all again,
>
>
> (Sorry for the cross posting, but I would like to have feedback from  an 
> advice from  a newbie to programming from the perspective of an expert 
> and also feedback from the perspective of an educator).
>
> As I said in another mail, this  semester is starting and I'm planning 
> the activities for the courses. One of them is for people related with 
> Informatics Technologies and Education (Virtual Learning) as I wrote 
> previously* and the other one if for freshmen students in University 
> (most of them). For the second one group I'm thinking in some kind of 
> collaborative game development, following the ideas of the previous 
> semester with the Pingus/Lemmings Clone [1]. This time I want to go 
> quickly on Etoys and use the Bots Inc. environment to write more code 
> overpassing the restrictions intended for Etoys and younger children.
>
> [1] http://pingus.seul.org/welcome.html
>
> At the same time, I'm interested in study the collaborative solving of 
> problems from a theoretical, computational and educative perspective. 
> The idea is to make some kind of Squeak simulation on how collective 
> problem solving its carried and see, in the classroom, if the model, in 
> some way, its related with reality. From the previous semester work I 
> have some ideas and hypothesis (thanks to the community on these list 
> for educational reflexion, multiagent hints and specially to Scott 
> Wallace for his "coordination" code for messages to stars).
>
> I would like to hear what do you think of this ideas for student projects:
>
>  - To make some kind of robocup: There will be two competing teams that 
> are trying to make a point putting a "ball" in the goal of the 
> opponents. I'm not so interested in thing like perception (where is the 
> ball), but I'm on coordination between Robots and how they solve, in a 
> collective fashion, a problem. In that sense I have thought this other 
> project also,
>
>  - To make some kind of Maze  Squad: It's some kind of pingus clone, but 
> using Bots instead of Etoys. The robots are lock in a maze and you can 
> see the maze from upside (a la Pacman). They're relatively dumb (if they 
> found a wall they just bounce and go back, if they found a hole they 
> just fall into it), but there are some special bots which can be 
> selected to accomplish special task and help the others to get out of 
> the maze.
>   
Did you look at Kedama ? It's a simulation environment with _lots_ of 
turtles and it's interface is etoys.
I think the projets you describe can be made in Kedama.
Karl
> I'm not a programmer and with Squeak I'm relearning the experience of 
> programming with my students. But I have no problem learning and 
> exploring with them. We don't even need to solve the problem 
> (programming the all game). I just want to build with my students a nice 
> place to learn and to probe ideas and see "emergent behavior". My bet is 
> on the second project, but may be you have more hints to share with my 
> and my students.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Offray
>
> Pdt: * I'm still waiting for ideas or pointer on collective hypermedia 
> authoring... :-)
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